Affective logics: Re-making fidelity and homosociality in Kaante

Through industrial and textual analyses of Sanjay Gupta's Kaante/Thorns (2002; India) which remakes Reservoir Dogs (1992; USA), which itself is indebted to Ringo Lam's Lung fu fong wan/City on Fire (1987; Hong Kong), I propose to unpack and place in dialogue affective logics - fidelity and homosociality - which are central to debates on transnational remakes and the crime genre. Scholarly debates on remakes often imagine a monogamous relationship between the original and the remake, demanding fidelity to a single object; in contrast, the crime genre points to multiple affiliations and loyalties, inviting us to reconsider both "origin" and "original" as plural sites. In Kaante, Reservoir Dogs, and Lung fu fong wan fidelity and homosociality are central to the development and resolution of narrative conflicts. These affective concerns are also pivotal to the unequal inter-textual and industrial networks in which these films are produced, distributed, and exhibited. I examine the uneven and jagged mediascapes that enable Quentin Tarantino to become an auteur who pays homage to his "brilliant" male predecessors, and a connoisseur who introduces US (and world audiences) to works of "great" male, East Asian directors like Ringo Lam and Wong Kar-wai; in contrast, these very mediascapes cast Sanjay Gupta as a "bad Bollywood" director who can only copy - and steal Hollywood stories.